Best way to unlock smithing recipes?

[Katsu]

its going really slow for me, should i just smelt down weapons or should i craft things? whats the fastest way to unlock new recpies?

[Zerosaiko]

tl;dr - Make weapons that sell for ~100k since the max value of weapons is hardcapped, try to use cheap recipes. Should probably also make sure your curious smither/smelter is doing the smithing/smelting.

It's gonna be pretty slow either way, but probably smithing over smelting. (Iirc, smelting gives 1/5 the XP that smithing does for the same weapon, though of course you can smith something then smelt it). It doesn't really matter who does the smithing/smelting except when the curious perks come in.

So smithing recipe unlocks work through a hidden XP bar called Research Points or something like that. Of course, not being actual XP means that your learning rate doesn't help or hurt it, but I'm pretty sure that the Research Points you get for smithing or smelting are the same as the XP that you get before learning rate kicks in.

There's actually a hard cap to a weapon's value, so at some point you might want to see if you can find a cheaper recipe for the same value. Javelins are probably the best for this since throwing weapons (except for axes, they're bugged iirc) get a boost to their value.

[Katsu]

Originally posted by Zerosaiko:

tl;dr - Make weapons that sell for ~100k since the max value of weapons is hardcapped, try to use cheap recipes. Should probably also make sure your curious smither/smelter is doing the smithing/smelting.

It's gonna be pretty slow either way, but probably smithing over smelting. (Iirc, smelting gives 1/5 the XP that smithing does for the same weapon, though of course you can smith something then smelt it). It doesn't really matter who does the smithing/smelting except when the curious perks come in.

So smithing recipe unlocks work through a hidden XP bar called Research Points or something like that. Of course, not being actual XP means that your learning rate doesn't help or hurt it, but I'm pretty sure that the Research Points you get for smithing or smelting are the same as the XP that you get before learning rate kicks in.

There's actually a hard cap to a weapon's value, so at some point you might want to see if you can find a cheaper recipe for the same value. Javelins are probably the best for this since throwing weapons (except for axes, they're bugged iirc) get a boost to their value.

So I should craft weapons instead of just smelting?

[Zerosaiko]

Yeah, plus you can't really get anything worthwhile to smelt without smithing, since the more expensive weapons are... well, expensive, they also seem to be gated by Clan Tier for some reason, and of course there'll be less of them anyway.

Also, there seem to be five imperial pommels that could in theory have a higher hard cap than other 2h sword parts, though I can't really test it myself right now.

[Katsu]

Originally posted by Zerosaiko:

Yeah, plus you can't really get anything worthwhile to smelt without smithing, since the more expensive weapons are... well, expensive, they also seem to be gated by Clan Tier for some reason, and of course there'll be less of them anyway.

Also, there seem to be five imperial pommels that could in theory have a higher hard cap than other 2h sword parts, though I can't really test it myself right now.

What weapons should I craft and sell in the early game?

[Zerosaiko]

If I remember right, you start off with the pieces to make a two-handed sword (or maybe the starting pieces are random T1 pieces? Not sure). So you'd probably take out some looters or other bandits, keep the weapons, sell the rest, then smelt those down for materials.

But yeah, you'll probably want to start off with 2h swords (maybe axes too? Haven't really tried, swords are probably a safer bet). Once you can make javelins, those should sell well in general while being cheaper to make.

The actual formula is long so it's not on bannerlordperks or anything, but weapon value is determined by its materials and its stats(damage, speed, and length). It'll put swinging and thrusting damage and speed through some calculation, pick the one that comes out greater (while giving swinging a further boost), then use the length. You ideally want high damage, but having low speed can actually hurt your value, so sacrificing damage for speed can be worth it. (For reference, using two weapons with everything equal except for 50 vs 100 speed, the 100 speed one would probably be at least 3x more valuable).

You'll probably only have fully 2h parts for 2h swords, but once you can make swords that can be used both one-hand and two-hand, those should sell for more than a sword that's just two-handed. It looks like there are a few parts that affect it separately but it's not really worth worrying about early on.